


shiro is a teacher and nothing hurts

by whichlights



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bisexual Lance (Voltron), F/F, F/M, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gen, Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Keith and Shiro are Siblings, M/M, Multi, adopted but whatever, none of ur favs are cishet :), pidge is a genderfluid trans girl this is the hill i will die on, shiro is an amputee u cowards, sorry the tags keep changing, the original female character is technically a self insert, this hell fandom doesnt deserve my aus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-21
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-10-08 21:20:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10396431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whichlights/pseuds/whichlights
Summary: I didn't work all too hard on this but here we are the wholesome "Shiro is a teacher and the other paladins are in first grade" because we're allvery tiredincomplete and discontinued bc i got too lazy to edit out something i don't ship anymore





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> author is anti shaladin and very exhausted
> 
> expect slow updates if at all
> 
> tw for brief misgendering at the beginning, then never again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i just remembered first grade is the year i had to do phonetics au cancelled

On the first day of school, Shiro sat in his classroom smiling, his hope obviously still intact. The bell would ring soon, and then Shiro would get to meet all his new students. He'd heard from Coran (the ex kindergarten teacher, now teaching fifth grade) that "when the boy with the mullet and the boy with the chip in his tooth started fighting, it was best to leave it to the boy with the sunshine smile."

Sounded fun.

Sam Holt came into the room first. "Shiro! I'm glad I caught you before class started. I tried to get Matt to tell you _weeks_ ago."

"Matt doesn't tell me anything, sir." Shiro smiled at his old boss from when he worked at the aerospace department, before loosing his arm in the accident. "What's up?"

"It's about Katie."

"Who's Katie?" Shiro blinked, confused.

"My daughter. Sort of."

"What happened to your son?" It clicked. "Oh! Wait. Sorry, my bad. So her name is Katie?"

"That, or Pidge. Don't ask why. Please use either she/her or they/them pronouns for her, depending on what she says she feels like."

"Today is her?"

"Unless she says otherwise." Sam smiled. "Thank you so much, Shiro. We're all trying really hard to make Katie feel accepted and open with her identity. Matt's been a big help, since he's nonbinary. I thought you'd be a good place to start too, since you're trans too. Katie might reach out to you a lot. Please let her."

"It's all good, Mr. Holt." Shiro smiled as the bell rang. "That's your cue to let the little angles come to me."

"Don't you mean angels?"

"I said what I said." Shiro rubbed his head as the first of the kids came into his classroom, carting backpacks bigger than them. Shiro clapped. "Take a seat anywhere you want, kiddos!"

A small boy with brown skin walked up to him. He had a chipped tooth. "Why's your arm shiny?" He asked, pointing.

Shiro blinked, then shrugged. "I lost my actual arm, so this is a robot arm."  _Metal prosthetic with basic movement functions. High tech._ Shiro held up his metal arm to give the kid a high five. "What's your name?"

"Lance!" He said proudly. "I'm six!"

"That's so cool." Shiro grinned. "Can you go take a seat so I can start class?"

Lance nodded and went to sit by a boy with a sunshine smile. A bit aways was a boy with a mullet, who Shiro was surprised to realize he knew him. Keith waved at him slowly, and Shiro waved back.  _Should have known Keith would get into arguments. I'll keep an eye on him for mom._

A kid in a pair of green overalls, and small pigtails went up to him, pulling on his shirt. "Mr. Sir, did my dad tell you about my pro-nouns?"

"Ah, Katie! Of course he did. Is she still okay?"

Katie nodded. "Thanks!" She gave him a smile as she dashed off. Shiro remembered that she'd skipped a grade, and was a year younger than the others. 

He stepped in front of the classroom. "Can we all quiet down, please?"

The kids eventually started to calm down, getting quieter. Shiro smiled at them. "Alright, thank you. I'm your teacher, Mr. Shirogane. But you guys can call me Shiro."

"Do we get to say our names?" Lance asked.

"Yep! I even have a little game planned." Shiro got out a small foam ball he'd _borrowed_ from the gym. "Alright, when the ball gets passed to you, you have to say your name, and a fact about yourself. It can be your favorite color, your favorite animal, a hobby, whatever you want!"

Shiro tossed the ball to Lance first, since he was waving his hands in the air wildly. He caught it and said loudly. "I'm Lance! I like girls and boys!"

Shiro smiled at him widely.  _I've got a little club forming. I must guide this baby bi on his journey._

Lance passed the ball to the boy beside him. "I'm Hunk." He said. "And I want to build things when I grow up!"

 _A little engineer, nice._ Shiro nodded at him.

Hunk tossed the ball to a girl named Shay who liked sunrises. Shay tossed it randomly to a girl named Nyma who owned three cats. Nyma tossed it to Katie, who proclaimed to the entire class that she was a girl, but only today, and that tomorrow might be different. She passed it to Keith, who had been sitting silently on the other side of the room. 

"I'm Keith." He said hesitantly. "My favorite color is red." 

"My anemone!" Lance yelled and pointed. 

"What's an anemone?" A boy in the back blinked.

"Isn't that from Finding Nemo?"

"It's a word my brother taught me. It means I don't like him." Lance crossed his arms.

Shiro snorted. "I think you heard him wrong. The word you're looking for is  _enemy_. Though I think you're a little too young to have an  _enemy._ "

Lance huffed. Keith quietly passed the ball to a boy named Klaizap.

Class went smoothly other than that, and soon it was time for lunch. "Alright everyone, line up." He said. The kids put down their handwriting practice sheets and ran to the door. Lance and Keith both wanted to be first in line, but Shiro let Shay go first, which both of them could agree with. He lead his line of children down the hall, and took the outside through the courtyard to get to the other building, where the lunch room was. 

Each grade had an assigned table. Shiro told the kids where to sit after, and they went to get food in an orderly fashion, except for the one or two who had a lunchbox. Shiro sat down and pulled out his lunchbox. 

Partway through lunch, the third graders lunch time intersected with the first grader's, so a very loud "SHIRO!" and Shiro going "OOMPH" when Matt ran into him could be heard.

His fellow teacher grinned at him. "I told the kid we'd be raising chickens later in the year and they're so excited."

"Are you going to do the fish tank again?"

"Hel- heck yah." Matt punched his arm. "Can I sit with you? I wanna check on Katie."

"Thank you for telling me about that like your dad wanted you to, by the way."

Matt literally bit his tongue to keep from swearing in front of the kids. "I knew I was forgetting something. But she's okay?"

"She's over there, making friends with Hunk." Shiro pointed. Katie looked up and waved. Matt smiled at her. "So day one good for you so far?"

"The boy in the blue shirt over there, Lance, declared my little brother as his  _anemone._ " Shiro snorted. "Can I finish my sandwich please? We only have a few more minutes before recess."

The kids overheard. "Recess!" They cheered. 

Shiro smiled and rubbed his head. Matt ran off to sit by Pidge. Shay and Nyma, who were sitting in front of him. "Is he your boyfriend?" Nyma asked.

"What?" Shiro spluttered.

"My brother has a boyfriend." Nyma said. "Is that teacher yours?"

"No no no no." Shiro turned red.

"But you like him, right?" Shay asked.

 _I have six year olds investigating my love life._ "Will you tell anyone if I answer that with a yes?"

"We won't tell anyone!" Shay and Nyma promised, holding up their hands to show they weren't even crossing their fingers. Shiro sighed, and rediscovered the term "saved by the bell". "Well, that's recess." He smiled.

"You like him." Nyma commented. "Your face went all red when he leaned on you."

"Alright, you win." Shiro sighed, laughing slightly. "Get in line so I can take you to recess." 

Nyma scrambled after Shay, who'd already gone to stand behind Plaxum in line. Shiro lead his merry band of trouble makers out of the cafeteria into the playground, where there was the old playground, the swings, the new playground, and a big field to run around in. There was also a big oak tree with picnic benches to sit under. Shiro sat and watched to make sure nothing happened. 

Shay and Hunk ran past the swingset and started playing in the sand under them. Katie, who if Shiro remembered right didn't like the outdoors, was standing hesitantly beside Lance as he was explaining how much fun they were going to have together, but she was smiling. Keith was befriending one of the kindergartners who were out here before Shiro's class.

There was a soft sigh, and Shiro turned around to see Allura stretching. "I have a few minutes between classes, and thought I'd see who was out here." The gym teacher smiled and sat beside Shiro, poking his chest. "You stole one of my dodge balls."

"It was for the kids. I'll return it after school." He promised. 

"Oh, you're as bad as Coran. He took three hula hoops, and the broken jump rope. I don't know  _what_ he's planning, but it's gonna be cool."

Shiro laughed. "See over there? That's Katie Holt, and that's Lance and Rose beside her."

"Which girl is Katie and which one is Rose?" Allura asked. "I've had all summer to forget these faces."

"Katie is the one in the overalls."

"Cute." Allura smiled. 

"We were doing a name activity, and Lance says to the whole class that he likes boys and girls." Shiro smiled. "Good boy."

"Is that why he's trying to give your little brother a flower?"

Shiro sat up straight and watched as Lance walked over to Keith and gave him a yellow dandelion. "Wait, what? Lance also declared Keith was his  _anenome_ -"

"They seem to be getting along fine now." Allura smiled. "You should put them near each other in the seating chart. Not next to each other, but close. I remember them from last year, they were troublemakers when they put aside their differences long enough to work together in gym."

Allura stood up. "Speaking of, I think the second graders are ready for me. See ya, Shiro."

"Bye." Shiro waved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i dont know how children this age work im sorry


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im projecting SO MUCH in this story ahfgjkkagh i miss my old elementary school
> 
> edit: allura was confirmed as a teen so this story is just shiro/matt now!

The kids were upset but content about recess ending. They'd all accepted that it had to end eventually. What they were more upset about was that now they had to do phonetics. 

"I know how to talk! This is dumb!" Keith yelled.

"Do we have to?" Katie wailed. 

"How about  _you_ do phonetics and we go back out to play?" Hunk asked, and Shiro had an irrational urge to say yes. But the curriculum said otherwise. "Come on, we get to make little booklets! They're cute."

"Puppies are cute. Books are not." Lance corrected him.

"The booklet is about puppies." Shiro tried. "It's about the vowel sounds, just as a review, and there are puppies."

"Fine." Lance crossed his arms. At the promise of puppies, the rest of the class settled down and let him pass out the booklets and boxes of crayons and colored pencils. "Color in the booklet as you read the lesson. Raise your hand if you need help. When you're done, come up and I'll staple your booklet together."

The kids spent the next allotted thirty minutes doing their phonetics packets quietly, with the exception of the occasional muttering of the words, and Shiro sat at his desk, inconspicuously reading his book. It was about dragons, not puppies. When the kids came up to have their booklets stapled, they asked what he was reading, and he answered honestly. "A story about dragons." This was usually followed by the comment "it's a lot bigger than our books" and they went on their way.

When his timer went off, the kids were done anyways, just rereading their booklets. Shiro stood up, and continued with various lessons that he'd been planning for weeks. 

By the time the day was over, the kids were obviously tired, but seemed happy enough about learning. Shiro wanted to encourage them to keep learning, and be curious. If how the kids reacted to his love life was any clue, he'd say they were plenty curious. 

The kids sat in the cafeteria until their parents came to pick them up. The third graders and the first graders sat together because Shiro and Matt could keep a better eye on them together than apart, and that failed drastically when they momentarily lost a third grader named Jason. Allura found him and sat by the two teachers. "And this is why I teach gym, not classes." She smiled.

Shiro smiled back. Nyma skipped up to the three. She pointed at Matt. "My teacher likes you." She said. She skipped away happily.

Shiro could have died of embarrassment in that moment. 

Allura just laughed. "She's darling." 

"Shiro, you could have  _said_ something." Matt pointed out. 

"Nooooo, let me drown in my awkwardness." Shiro buried his face in his hands.

"Listen, I've had a crush on you for _forever_. Since you let those kids climb all over you a few years ago." Matt admitted. "And it was _adorable._ I might still have video."

Shiro smiled. "Alright. Can we have a super fancy formal dinnerdate this weekend and pretend I asked you super romantically and not in an elementary school cafeteria because a first grader is better at feelings than me?"

"Deal." Matt laughed.

"I'm happy for you two." Allura gave them a thumbs up and Shiro grinned. 

\---

Once all the kids got picked up and Shiro had returned the dodge ball to Allura, Shiro went to where Keith was sitting in the corner. "You alright?"

He nodded.

"Ready to go home?"

He nodded again, standing up. 

Shiro took him out to the parking lot, and loaded his stuff in the back while Keith went to sit in the passenger seat. When Shiro got in, he'd already messed with the radio to get it to the station he liked. Shiro let him.

"Did you like school?" Shiro asked, and turned to see Keith nodding. "Do you want to talk right now?" Keith shook his head. "No problem. Tell me if you do." Shiro smiled and started the drive home.

For some reason, Shiro had thought it was a  _brilliant_ idea that he take a job in a school that was thirty minutes away from where he lived. He didn't live with his parents still, but he did live in the same neighborhood, and Keith often came to his house after school if Mom and Dad weren't home. Shiro recorded episodes of WildKratz and LazyTown for Keith to watch while Shiro did his work.

With five minutes left in the car ride, Keith asked, "How do you know if you like someone?"

"Why do you ask?"

"I don't know. Lance is kind of cute, I guess, when he's not mad at me. He gave me a flower." Keith dug the flower out of his pocket to show Shiro proudly. Shiro smiled. "Do you like him?"

"I don't know." Keith shrugged.

"I just need to know, am I a good teacher?"

"You made us do phonetics." Keith said accusatorily. He pronounced it a little awkwardly, like phone-et-ticks, each syllable emphasized. "Everything else was good though."

"Sorry, kiddo, it's the rules, I have to teach you how to speak English."

"But I don't  _want_ to speak English." Keith argued. "I don't  _have_ to."

Shiro sighed. "Sometimes I feel a little like that."

"Pidge was cool!" Keith said excitedly, moving onto a new topic. 

"Oh, Katie. Yah, she's neat."

"Can she come over soon? Pleeease?" 

"I'll have to check with Matt, but I don't see why not." Shiro said, ruffling his hair as they pulled into the driveway. "Go watch LazyTown, kiddo."

"You have work? But it's only the first day!"

"But I have to plan everything." Shiro pointed out. "We can't just have recess all day."

"Why not?" Keith grumbled as he hopped out of the car. Shiro laughed. 

\---

Before school started, the kids sat in the cafeteria, even if they didn't eat breakfast. The teachers swapped out morning duties to watch the kids. Today was Shiro's turn.

He had ex-students coming up to him to say hi, and he had his current students running up and smiling. At one point, Lance stood by him for an entire five minutes, asking nonstop questions. Once the bell rang, he went to his classroom, followed by a few of his students, including Hunk, Keith, and Katie, lead in a little line by Lance. 

While his little morning group waited for the other kids and the start class bell, Katie went up to pull on his sleeve. "I don't think I'm a girl today, Mr. Shiro. Can we use they?"

"Of course, kid." Shiro ruffled their hair. 

"How do I explain it to my friends? I don't want to say it wrong so they don't understand."

 _I love kids. Everything is so simple to them- it's not a matter of acceptance, but of understanding._ Shiro smiled. "Just say yesterday you were a girl, and today you aren't, and that they/them is what you use in place of she/her or he/him for people who aren't boys or girls."

"Thank you!" Pidge smiled and ran off to the table they shared with Keith, Hunk, and Lance, as dictated by the seating chart Shiro had pulled up on the whiteboard with the projector. 

Shiro started day two of first grade. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yah, im reminiscing how much i hated phonetics 
> 
> my tumblr is witchlightsands. love me <3


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took so long to update lol

It took Shiro a few weeks to figure out the extent of how his class functioned as a team. It was rather like cats, if he thought about it.

Keith and Lance made a good team, but  _only_ if they weren't arguing over something petty. Shiro would say it was a rather 50-50 shot on them working together or not. However, they didn't fight if Hunk was in the group with them. Hunk could work with anyone in class, but he worked best with Lance, Shay, or Pidge. Pidge worked best when they could be in charge, or with Rose. There were many rules of the first graders interacting and doing group work. Shiro had to make sure Pidge didn't work with Slav, or all hell would break loose.

Shiro also learned very quickly that his class was _very_ good at derailing conversations.

Shiro had just wanted the class to answer the math problem. Pidge raised their hand, everything was fine, then-

"As they said, the answer is-"

Lance raised his hand, and before Shiro could call on him he called out, "Wait, they means more than one person. Pidge is only one person."

Shiro was resigned to acknowledging no math was going to be taught. 

"They is my pronoun today." Pidge said. 

"What?" 

"You know words like he or she to refer to boys or girls?" Shiro said. "Those are called pronouns, and you use pronouns to refer to people. They can be used for more than one person, or they can be used for people who aren't a boy or a girl."

"You don't have to be a boy or a girl?" Keith asked.

"Nope." Shiro said, and wondered how many parents would try to sue him over this. "You don't have to be a boy or a girl. You can be a boy even if people thought you were a girl when you were born, or a girl when people thought you were a boy. You can be both at the same time, or you can change between them."

"Like Pidge? Yesterday, Pidge was a girl." Nyma said.

"But today I'm not." Pidge crossed their arms.

"Will you be a girl tomorrow?"

"Maybe. I feel like a girl most of the time. But sometimes I... don't. But I don't feel like a boy either. I've never felt like a boy."

"When you're not a girl, we should say they instead of she?" Hunk asked.

"Yes please." Pidge nodded.

"Mr. Shiro, why don't we set up part of the board so we know if Pidge is a they or a she every day!" 

The class cheered at the suggestion.

Shiro grabbed a marker, and marked off a section of the board and labeled it "Pidge's pronouns today are" with a blank. Then he filled in "they".

"I only sort of feel like a boy." Keith piped up. "What does that mean?"

"Well, only you can decide what can feel most comfortable for you. If you're not strictly a boy or a girl, the word is nonbinary."

"Do you know anyone who's nonbinary?"

"Matt is." Shiro said. "He's a nonbinary boy. It's like... a boy a little bit to the left."

"I think I'm a boy a little to the left." Keith said. "But nonbinary boy is too long."

"I'll help you figure out labels later." Shiro promised.

"I like boys, and girls, and apparently people who aren't either." Lance frowned. "Does that mean I'm still bi? My brother says if you like boys and girls, you're bi."

"That's the simplified version. People who are bi like more than one gender." Shiro agreed. "If you want to say you're bi, you can do that."

"I'm bi too, then!" Rose called out.

"Are you bi?" Shay asked Shiro.

"Yes."

"You like Matt." Pidge said matter-o-factly. "You smooched his cheek."

"Boys can like boys?" Hunk blinked.

"Yah!" Nyma said. "My brother has a boyfriend."

 _Ah, yes, shaping young minds._ Shiro thought sarcastically.  _I am so going to get sued._

\---

Much to Shiro's surprise and pleasure, no one sued him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> damn these kids have their life figured out i wish i was that put together at their age
> 
> my tumblr is witchlightsands and im a girl a little to the left

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr is witchlightsands and i write actual things too check out my other fics


End file.
